What Barack Obama, Republicans get with a deal

It’s not a perfect deal for the White House — but it’s a worse deal for Republicans.

Democrats won’t say it too loudly just yet, but the emerging budget agreement leaves Republicans with remarkably little to show for forcing the first government shutdown in 17 years: They barely nicked Obamacare and their poll numbers are in tank.

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Boehner pushes House bill

Pelosi blasts House GOP

President Barack Obama would get most of what he wanted. He had insisted that Congress reopen the government and extend the country’s borrowing authority without any ideological strings attached. He held the line on the debt ceiling and Democrats are set to hold off Republican attempts to lock in next year’s round of sequester budget cuts early.

There would be minor changes to the president’s signature health care law. The White House and Democratic leaders will argue the Obamacare provisions were a one-for-one proposition — each party got a fix to the Affordable Care Act — and did not come as the price for raising the debt limit or restarting the government, according to Democratic officials involved in the talks.

The Obamacare provisions risk muddying the president’s message, but the changes are so negligible that even House Republicans are grumbling that it’s a clean debt limit increase.

Even if the potential Senate deal survives in the House — still very much an open question — Obama would soon be back fighting the next round with Republicans. The debt limit increase would last almost four months. It’s less than what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wanted but longer than what House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested. And the next debt limit hike wouldn’t be contingent upon a budget deal, as Boehner proposed.

The negotiations continued Monday night, and no formal announcement is expected until after Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) meet separately with their caucuses Tuesday. New sticking points could emerge, as they did late Monday on Obamacare, but both leaders closed the day by saying they were optimistic.

“We’re doing our best to make everybody happy, but everyone knows we’re not going to be able to do that,” Reid said. “So everybody understand, we’re doing the very best we can with all the frailties that we have as people and legislators.”

The proposal would fund the government until Jan. 15 and extend the debt limit until Feb. 7. The plan under consideration would also require larger bicameral budget negotiations to conclude by Dec. 13.

Republicans would secure a provision to force Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to certify that individuals receiving Obamacare subsidies meet the required income levels. The department’s inspector general would later have to conduct an audit on the matter. This is a comedown from the delay in the medical device tax that Republicans had wanted after they had previously abandoned efforts to repeal the law, defund it and delay the individual mandate.

But sources said Monday night that the GOP would win that proposal only if Democrats secured the inclusion of a provision to delay the law’s so-called belly button tax for one year. The tax, which was supposed to be levied against most insurance plans to help spread the risk for insurers who take on the sickest patients next year, would cost $63 annually per person covered by an insurance plan. The change could be a boon to unions, and Republicans were balking at what they were calling a carve-out for a favored Democratic constituency.

The emerging deal would face a tough road in the House, where Boehner’s leadership team, allies and rank-and-file lawmakers spent Monday saying that Reid and McConnell were crafting a crummy framework.